Nice work Jules, I am working on getting Shake.....I finally got Final Cut pro 5 and my training to use the program starts next week where we'll be using my HDV footage as the training material.

Thanks. My workflow rely on a mac: Final Cut Studio and Shake. Before this June Shake was a 2999 dollar application for a post-industry (only), but after this significant price drop I decided to buy it and use for my footage. There are several unusable features for us, but this SmoothCam node is worth the price.

Interests:filming/editing/exotic travel. l write reviews of editing software, books, tutorials and Mac based NLE related products for the www.kenstone.net and www.lafcpug.org sites as well as articles for Asian Diver Magazine and wetpixel. I am one of the founding members of the San Diego UnderSea Film Festival

Posted 27 September 2006 - 08:27 PM

Damn, Apple is the only company that makes me pay for software too, Shake looks like it could be pretty useful too. Oh well, what's another 500.
Steve B)

www.kenstone.net
www.lafcpug.org

Steve Douglas
steve-sharksdelight@cox.net

I have worked as an unpaid reviewer for the editing websites since 2002. Most all hardware and software is sent to me free of charge, however, in no way am I obligated to provide either positive or negative evaluations. Any suggestions I make regarding products are a result of my own, completely, personal opinions and experiences with said products.

Thanks. My workflow rely on a mac: Final Cut Studio and Shake. Before this June Shake was a 2999 dollar application for a post-industry (only), but after this significant price drop I decided to buy it and use for my footage. There are several unusable features for us, but this SmoothCam node is worth the price.

Do NOT remind me about that! Sajnos(sp?) , even though I got staff pricing, it was still very expensive! 26 days after I bought the upgrade to 4... they dropped the price. Good thing my credit card covered a little of the difference. Bastards!Nem besezlik magyarul (sp?). But dating a magyar girl was more expensive than Shake... but she was better value.

Do you export straight from FCP or use an intermediate codec? Esp for HDV which is lossy. I experimented with DVC Pro HD, which isn't as lossy. My settings for analysis translation smooth is 3.5 for busy scenes and 2.5 for more static scenes. But it still takes a while to render. And you do lose resolution when you enlarge unless you use a more robust codec.

Drew
Moderator
"Journalism is what someone else does not want printed, everything else is public relations."

"I was born not knowing, and have only had a little time to change that here and there.

I tried a couple demo plugin ones for Premiere Pro on the PC but you can see the quality drop when you view the full size 1440/1080 back. Maybe not as bad with DV material. I suppose you could just keyframe the shot frame by frame.

Wags,
Shake doesn't interpolate unless you rescale, and the resolution loss depends on the codec used. I only use Shake if it is a very important piece (because of the render time), and use upconverted uncompressed 10 bit for bits that need stabilization (which hopefully isn't too much too often). Upscaling in uncompressed, resolution loss is minimal, of course if you downscale again, you get the compression artifacts.

Drew
Moderator
"Journalism is what someone else does not want printed, everything else is public relations."

"I was born not knowing, and have only had a little time to change that here and there.

Do NOT remind me about that! Sajnos(sp?) , even though I got staff pricing, it was still very expensive! 26 days after I bought the upgrade to 4... they dropped the price. Good thing my credit card covered a little of the difference. Bastards!Nem besezlik magyarul (sp?). But dating a magyar girl was more expensive than Shake... but she was better value.

Do you export straight from FCP or use an intermediate codec? Esp for HDV which is lossy. I experimented with DVC Pro HD, which isn't as lossy. My settings for analysis translation smooth is 3.5 for busy scenes and 2.5 for more static scenes. But it still takes a while to render. And you do lose resolution when you enlarge unless you use a more robust codec.

Well, my Shake purchase was just in time. I wanted to buy it earlier, but the money was missing. However, in my Apple-life it was the first time when I was lucky: I bought one of my Display just before a significant price--drop, or my Final Cut Studio, just before they announced a cross-grade, when with a single DVD Studio Pro was enught to buy the whole stuff for less:-(

Yes, a magyar lány could be very expensive as every women in earth. I have 3. Wife and two beautiful daugthers

Back to job: I did not use the "export to shake" menu. I used the in-out point setting on the timeline and exported that part using the Apple intermediate codec. From Shake I exported back to Apple HDV codec (because the sequence was set to that preset.)

Actually I would like to built a RAID 5 or 0 array to use HD uncompressed or at least DVCPRO-HD codec the enhance the post-production quality. For example you can capture from the tape via analog HD out, and digitize with a decklink or AJA kona card to the computer, and you can use any codec you want. It needs time to figure out which solution is the best. (Except to buy an HDCAM-SR:-))

Render time: I made the turtle sample with my small macbook pro (2ghz core duo). Finishing the whole procedure took about 3 hours. The clip is only 22 seconds! I could not play the finished Shake footage continously, I had to render it. You can try it, it is on the same directory, 75 megs.

For my last project I used my new Mac Pro Xeon Quad. It was more than 2,2 times faster...

I tried a couple demo plugin ones for Premiere Pro on the PC but you can see the quality drop when you view the full size 1440/1080 back. Maybe not as bad with DV material. I suppose you could just keyframe the shot frame by frame.

I can post a full resolution HD clip and the stabilized one, if you want to evaluate it.

Back to job: I did not use the "export to shake" menu. I used the in-out point setting on the timeline and exported that part using the Apple intermediate codec. From Shake I exported back to Apple HDV codec (because the sequence was set to that preset.)

Actually I would like to built a RAID 5 or 0 array to use HD uncompressed or at least DVCPRO-HD codec the enhance the post-production quality. Render time: I made the turtle sample with my small macbook pro (2ghz core duo). Finishing the whole procedure took about 3 hours. The clip is only 22 seconds! I could not play the finished Shake footage continously, I had to render it. You can try it, it is on the same directory, 75 megs.

Igen, Shake is very power hungry and disk gobbler too. For 10 bit uncompressed, a RAID 0 at minimum 183mb/s is necessary. I run 5 SATA II drives on a port multipled SATA II PCI X card to capture. Since the new Express PCI architecture came out, my Kona and SATA cards are all obsolete. Moreover DVC PRo HD has chroma issues and Apple Int Codec has generational losses so neither are good for archiving or output. Sheer is a nice codec for final output but not to work with. 1/2 the size of 10bit uncompressed with no loss.Hehe you are really asking a lot to work with a Mac Book Pro. Even with a 7200 100gb drive, the max throughput is about 40mb/s. You need to get a express e card for SATAII so you can use your external RAID 0 array to use shake.Seriously though, the new Xeon quads would be nice for Shake + FCP, but I have too much legacy stuff to go there yet. Not until it hits 4 Gz quad. Which is probably 2008. Shake is for desktop until they fit a quad in the MBP.WagsI'm not a well, but when it comes to Apple post, I do work on staying in the know.

Drew
Moderator
"Journalism is what someone else does not want printed, everything else is public relations."

"I was born not knowing, and have only had a little time to change that here and there.

Interests:filming/editing/exotic travel. l write reviews of editing software, books, tutorials and Mac based NLE related products for the www.kenstone.net and www.lafcpug.org sites as well as articles for Asian Diver Magazine and wetpixel. I am one of the founding members of the San Diego UnderSea Film Festival

Posted 28 September 2006 - 07:04 PM

Boris Continuum 4 has that filter you are looking for plus many other hi end filters as well. There is also a program called iStabilize out for Macs and Pcs. Haven't tried using it yet tho so I can't attest to its quality or ease of use.
Steve B)

www.kenstone.net
www.lafcpug.org

Steve Douglas
steve-sharksdelight@cox.net

I have worked as an unpaid reviewer for the editing websites since 2002. Most all hardware and software is sent to me free of charge, however, in no way am I obligated to provide either positive or negative evaluations. Any suggestions I make regarding products are a result of my own, completely, personal opinions and experiences with said products.

This is a v interesting thread for anyone with shaky old man palsy like me, or 'current induced' shake like shawnh.

The image stabilizing filter that comes standard with FCP is seriously useless IMHO, and I've considered a third party plug in to resolve camera shake. My bro teaches various video apps for the Mac in the UK (eg Mayo and others) and has recommened Shake as one of the best solutions for serious film makers. He once showed me a clip of a dog hanging out of a car window filmed from another car, bouncing alongside. After the Shake treatment it looked like the camera had been on smooth rails. This was before HDV and HD, so I am not sure how the recompression artifacts Drew mentions makes this a viable or non-viable solution in HD.

US$500 is still big money for amateur work, but may be worthwhile for serious production. If the verdict here is that Shake is the best out there for the money I am tempted.

Oh Nicky, the IS filter in FCP is decent but requires way too much work and is actually really slow for the result. Shake is much better and more automated but you have to be judicious in using it as it also takes a long time to "shake". Once you convert to 8bit uncompressed HD, it's lossless. Recompression for output to HD DVD or DVD or HDV results in negligible loss in resolution only pixel peepers would care for. Unfortunately I'm a pixel peeper. Problem with using multiple programs to work a clip is generational loss, which uncompressed doesn't suffer from. Using Apple Intermediate Codec does have generational losses (although much better than HDV).Problem with editing 8bit uncompressed is HD space and speed. You'll need a very fast RAID 0 system with minimum 200MB/s to run uncompressed. And if you don't have a blinking fast system with a HD SDI card, it won't play smoothly.Intermediate codecs like Apple's or Canopus HD save time and work for most applications except for film out.

Wealth? Well? Or just a deep pit?

This is a v interesting thread for anyone with shaky old man palsy like me, or 'current induced' shake like shawnh.

The image stabilizing filter that comes standard with FCP is seriously useless IMHO, and I've considered a third party plug in to resolve camera shake. My bro teaches various video apps for the Mac in the UK (eg Mayo and others) and has recommened Shake as one of the best solutions for serious film makers. He once showed me a clip of a dog hanging out of a car window filmed from another car, bouncing alongside. After the Shake treatment it looked like the camera had been on smooth rails. This was before HDV and HD, so I am not sure how the recompression artifacts Drew mentions makes this a viable or non-viable solution in HD.

US$500 is still big money for amateur work, but may be worthwhile for serious production. If the verdict here is that Shake is the best out there for the money I am tempted.

Drew
Moderator
"Journalism is what someone else does not want printed, everything else is public relations."

"I was born not knowing, and have only had a little time to change that here and there.

Hey Jules, downloaded those clips but cannot open them.
I got rid of QT7 when I installed Mpeg Streamclip and Media Player Classic that normaly plays QT H.264 etc files. Also VLC player cannot play them.